O_O LASERS

FriendlyFire wrote:
Those aren’t beam weapons, they’re just elongated single shots. In beam_effects.ini, make some code like this:

[BeamSpear]
nickname = put_your_name_here
tip_length = ; Put a large number there
tail_length = ; Put a large number there
head_width = ; Play with this, makes the beam wider
core_width = ; Play with this, makes the beam wider
tip_color = ; RGB color
core_color = ; RGB color
outter_color = ; RGB color
tail_color = ; RGB color
head_brightness = ; Play with this, makes the head stuff more apparent
trail_brightness = ; Likewise, makes the trail more apparent
head_texture = ; Can be star or ball
trail_texture = ; Can be thin or wide
flash_size = ; Increase to make a big flash when you fire the weapon

this is actually all you need. i got effects ofc not as great as the ones in FF’s video, but far enough for my current purposes:
i have the tip length equal with tail length and core width (and comparably small), a huge core length, head width small, the sec_core width even a quarter of the core width, a star head texture, a wide trail texture and a flash size of three times the core width.
{right click - show image for full resolution, ofc}

Anyone else thinking this?

OR is that just me.

Im stayin outa this one now… i made the Nova sad……

Nova wrote:
Gisteron, make a screenshot when you moving guns

you know what? i won’t. try out, do it yourself, find the balance of effect and refire rate that you wish. your other option is to learn how to ale.

whether you ever will get it or not, there is no perfect beam method. even in FF’s video the only reason you saw an entire beam, was the slow motion of the gun and a high refire rate. you can see it on the energy bar (knowing form the guns list, that only one weapon fires).

cheeseontoast, true… true…

If you want a real REAL laser do a 300,000,000 m/s with a very high fire rate like 0.000001 (in the ini) laser, and don’t forget do a big life time!

Just adding to this thread here. I know it’s easy to pick on Nova for what I only hope is a language barrier, but you all should really take it easy.

Anyway as has been said many before there is no way to do a proper beam like you would see in Freespace. Freelancer just doesn’t have any sort of weapon type that works as you would want.

You can either do the high refire long beam effect, or you can do a muzzle flash ale.

With a high refire long beam you get clipping when you sweep the beam. Also hitting something at a distance shorter than the length of the beam effect will cause no visible effect.

On the other hand, a muzzle flash ale effect (if designed correctly) will produce a solid beam no matter what you do. You can sweep them just fine, but the beam will always penetrate whatever you shoot it at.

There is no “right” solution. In my opinion the best way to do it would be a hybrid solution like I used in this video. Granted I didn’t put much effort into the beam effect portion, but I used a muzzle flash beam to cover the first 1km of the beam, and the projectile beam covered the rest of the beam.

Yes. The ALE-based muzzle flash is NOT affected by turret speed. It will work whatever the case. Of course, if you don’t make the refire rate fast enough, then the projectiles themselves might misbehave (IE you could sweep by and miss someone because the invisible shots were fired before and after the target), but the effect is unaffected by it.

However, I don’t think this should be used for much more than very special weapons, as it’ll shoot through whatever you fire. A hybrid method, as Why said, is possible, but still a little flaky. FL was never designed for beam weapons, and it shows.

kudos, why, the effect is impressive!

Very nice work Nova.

Glad to see you got it working by yourself!

Nova:

Credit where it is due:

Excellent on 2 counts:

1. You got your laser working and learned quite a bit.

2. Your English has improved a great deal!

Well done on both, and keep up the good work.

I think you have seen it is better to not ask others to do stuff for you, ask for help and do it yourself as you finally did here.

Then you can help others more later.

i have been trying it today, too, based on the no_gun01_rank01_flash effect and came up with, that i can in no way change the length of the beam appearance at all… despite that i ofc cannot get the beam to grow from the emission HP towards the shot direction…

Nice work. I’ve been messing around with beam weapons off and on but I was using the beam.ini with moderate success. After watching your video I think I might have to learn some ALE lol

BRUTAL ! Also glad u did it at the end!
Im still not that brave to start understand way of making it. And still dont need it. But soon - who knows…

Use it now with BIG smile!